Mother fails to feed fuzzy overlord, suffers Squirrely Wrath

Lots of squirrels means lots of happy owls and other birds of prey that don’t do a darned thing to hurt humans and are otherwise pleasant to have around. (Though it sucks when a hawk takes your cat, I admit.)

Anna

The problem is twofold: first, the little buggers carry rabies, and second, people feed them as if they’re pets, not wildlife, so the squirrels aren’t afraid of coming up and nipping folks that don’t feed them. From a public health perspective, this’s bad. Squirrels are uber-cute, but they’re not nice creatures unless they’re raised as pets from birth. They should be fed at distances no less than eight feet (so they don’t get bright ideas). We had a problem with aggressive squirrels at the monastery too. I’m all for feeding them, but I’m also for kicking them when they get too cozy with humans.

Maddie

Am I the only one who thinks it’s just a little bit funny in a “wow, glad that wasn’t my kid” kind of way? Rabies = Bad, absolutely. And rabies shots hurt A Lot so I’m told, but wow, that little critter had some nuts on him so to speak 🙂

Mike

Squirrels are for moving target practice, cat pouncing practice, dog chasing practice, and highway tag. I just don’t get this whole city slicker thing “Awwwwww, its so cute!” and then proceed to treat them like little doggies. Sheesh, that with some of our local wildlife and you will be lucky if rabies is all that happens to you. Ever seen a pissed off feral Raccoon? Or a fox?

Sometimes it not the size of the fighter, but the size of the fight in the fighter.

Nevermind the Mountain Lions, Bobcats, coyotes, and badgers that live around here.

Chris - Wichita

Heck, when I was working for the PD at WSU, we had squirrels at the campus post office that the post office guys fed constantly.. They would take pecans out of your hands by grabbing them with their paws and mouth. They were amazing. They would tug your pant legs, or do the cat-style rub against your leg until you paid attention and fed them (and the guys at the post office went through about $50.00 worth of pecans a week… The interesting part was that the squirrles would let anyone feed them, and they didn’t really ‘snatch and run’ with the food either. Granted, they’d been doing this for years, and so the squirrels had many generations of being fed by tons of people. We had no bitings in the 5 years I was there.

According to animal control, squirrels don’t carry rabies. So either the supposed officials here don’t know what the hell they are talking about or the people giving the kid the shots don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

I’d probably get them regardless, just to be safe since I don’t personally know either way, I don’t see how they can’t carry rabies, that is just what the nice animal control officer told us….